People cause a lot of trouble over different ideas of right and wrong but the
truth is here.

Either something is wrong in itself no matter how good the consequences will be
or something may be wrong in itself but good because it has mostly good results.

If you accept the first then you will have to teach things like lying and
killing and pre-marital sex are wrong and are never right. This philosophy is
just a bigoted power game full of double standards. For example, if the act not
the results matters then it is wrong to lie to save a life. If lies are so bad
then it is wrong to let anybody believe anything that is wrong and so they
should be told the truth even if it drives them to suicide. But nobody who
claims to believe in the philosophy ever practices or teaches it consistently.
All it is good for is injustice and hypocrisy and deceit.

So that leaves us with the view that the end justifies the means when the end is
worth the means. For example, if an abortion of a baby that has developed into
the personhood stage will save the motherís life the abortion should be
performed. No theory about the rightness of acts from the consequences intended
by them seems to be perfect. All we can do is accept that no matter what moral
code we have there will be casualties so we have to accept the one that has the
least.

Objections to consequentalism:

a) If you promise your father on his deathbed that you will erect an expensive
gravestone over his grave you have to do it though the money would be better
spent on his grandchildren. But your father cared about his grandchildren and if
they need the money you know you can keep the money for them with his blessing
and that he would release you from the promise.

b) If a family will die if I do not send them medicine that is not as bad as
murdering them. But consequentalism says it is.

As always it depends on the circumstances. If the family could survive without
it if they tried hard enough then it is not murder. But if the medicine is the
ONLY way to save them AND YOU KNOW THAT then it is certainly murder to neglect
to send them the medicine. Results do not make you a murderer, intent does.

c) Consequentalism is too demanding for if your life savings can do more good in
the Third World you have to give them away.

But even absolutist ethics infer that we should give them away for an ethic that
does not claim to be for the best is not an ethic at all but a nonsense.
Absolutism frowns on wealth believing that sacrifice with simplicity is the duty
of every person but consequentalism encourages wealth under the right
circumstances.

Humanism does believe that there are many times that it is best just to stick
with the rule because if we discard rules altogether there will be no happiness.
We need rules but plenty of exceptions too when they are warranted. One of the
reasons we oppose religion for it says that loving God or obeying him is an
absolute duty. God represents absolutism. Liberals say that obeying God only
means we do things that any reasonable person would consider right. But the fact
of the matter is that if God comes first as they say then we can count ourselves
lucky that God's demands overlap with humanistic morals. If they didn't overlap
it wouldn't matter for God comes first and if he wants you to sacrifice your
babies then so be it.